Loloan Lobby Bar — Restaurant in Waterloo

Terrible experience.

My friends and I had a dinner reservation at Loloan Lobby Bar for New Years Eve. We made a reservation for 4 people at 9:15pm. We were excited to try their cocktails and thought it would be a great spot to spend our New Years Eve.

Our friends arrived about 30 minutes before our reservation time, so they sat at the bar and ordered a cocktail. The bartender was very friendly and assured them that eating was not necessary in the dining area and that Loloan is known for their craft cocktails so why not just stay for drinks! So us, being first timers here, assumed that was the case (since we had not heard or seen otherwise). When my boyfriend and I arrived our friends had already been seated. We joined them and about 15 minutes after we sat down, were greeted by a server who asked us what we would like to drink. We gave him our order and shortly after, he came back asking if we were ordering off of their $95.00, 5 course, New Years Eve menu. We responded saying we were just staying for drinks.

This was our downfall apparently as we should have known that there was, and I quote, "Absolutely no chance we are sitting at a table in the dining area without ordering food". We responded saying we were unaware of this policy as it is no where on their website and that the bartender had just told us that this wouldn't be a problem. The server proceeded to talk down to us and told us that this "bartender doesn't even work at the restaurant." (apparently the man making alcoholic cocktails behind the bar didn't even work at their establishment.) Our server then stormed away to "go have a word with the bartender". He came back moments later, still speaking to us in a condescending nasty tone, and told us he is moving people from the bar to our table and that we can take their spots. My friend replied saying that worked for us as we would be happy to not have him serving us anymore, since he was more than unpleasant. This man did not appreciate that comment and decided right then and there that he did not want us in the restaurant anymore and proceeded to tell us to leave.

I was in complete shock of his behaviour and I believe our response was more then warranted. Remember, this all happened because we were entirely unaware of their dining policy.

This obviously wasn't the end for us, and my friend reached out to the owner of Loloan explaining our terrible experience. The response we received today was shocking. I have never felt so disrespected. The beginning of the owners response had the servers take on what happened. This server apparently also being one of Loloans managers. This man blatantly lied to his boss, putting us (the customers) down. Saying we were verbally abusing him and that was his signal that we had too much to drink. I was sober (we had just arrived 15 minutes prior and hadn't even received a drink yet) and our friends had only ordered one drink prior to our arrival. All of us remember very clearly how awful this experience was. I can not begin to understand why he was immediately so rude and infuriated by the fact that we unknowingly decided to just have drinks there on NYE. And to top it all off the owners response was pathetic and unapologetic. He clearly doesn't care about the treatment of his customers and seems to turn a blind eye to the fact that the person he trusts to help customers with complaints and frustrations, in fact is the one making their experience worse.

I have seen multiple similar complaints and ratings like my own about the service and attitude from servers and owner. I think that this restaurant needs to potentially look at what they are doing wrong and stop blaming the customers.

Needless to say I will not be recommending this establishment to anyone and will never be going back. What a disgusting and belittling experience. I expected more from a restaurant that is considered to...

Avoid going to Loloan and Bihma’s at all costs. Paul Boehmer, the manager/owner and his staff have absolutely no concept of customer service and showing at the very least human decency. One of his waitresses spilt a curry all over my clothing. I was promised to have all dry cleaning costs covered. As the night continued staff at the restaurant continued being rude and disrespectful. When I reached out to Paul on this incident, of course he just has a whole bunch of excuses lined up. First he starts his email off with:

“ Your group was from outside the region and although your group was informed that we are not at this time excepting reservations from outside the region we were given a local address and so excepted the reservation. We are trying very hard to follow protocols and take very seriously this unfortunate situation.”

Not one person in my group was outside of the region. These are all people I have kept close in my social distancing bubble for the last 6 months. As I told him, just because we are group of people of colour does not mean we are from outside the region. Where this assumption was made was BEYOND me. Staff did not even check our IDs. But, of course this man wants to make every excuse out of his pocket just so he does not have to pay for a $300 shirt to get replaced or dry cleaned. He continued to say that my group “ choose to take your grievances out on the staff by withholding gratuity”. Uhm, Paul Boehmer please double check you payment records because everyone paid gratuity, even though it was no where near deserved. By all means, this man will NEVER sympathize for his customers yet has the audacity to say “I do apologize for not being able to find a side of the story that I can sympathize” while blaming the situation on the pandemic. Like please, I never knew a pandemic makes employee and restaurant owners forget the basic concept of customer service and respect.

At the end of the day, this is evidently a white mans restaurant. Cultural appropriation at it’s finest. You will not spot one ethnic person on the floor. They just throw them in the back to cook. At the very least Paul, train your non ethnic employees the basics of these dishes so they have some...

Loloan lobby bar is by far the worst establishment in terms of customer service. We went to loloan for my cousin's birthday party, and we had the most horrible experience EVER. When ordering food and asking for recommendations, we didn't get any insight into the dish other than what was written on the menu. Then after ordering, the server split sauce all over the birthday girl's clothes and to make matters worse, after being told that the shirt would be dry cleaned paid for by management when reaching out to said management, the response we got from them was shocking. They had the audacity to say that we were causing a scene in the restaurant for taking pictures at our table with no one around us. @Waldo Jeffers, your fake review doesn't change anything, Paul anyone can make a phony google account and post a review not mention u made your entire staff like it... Paul Boehmer, you weren't there at the restaurant, so please tell me how we were endangering anyone when we were in a separate corner away from everyone else dining there. In fact, I didn't see anyone except for the staff working. We were there at the restaurant near closing, and I swear taking a picture RIGHT beside the table we were sitting at doesn't endanger anyone's life. Not to mention the fact that we were sitting down and taking pictures. Needless to say, you guys lost out on a huge customer base. I personally have spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars at bhimas, before being turned away due to rude staff and subpar customer service. I foolishly thought Loloan would be different, and I was utterly wrong. It goes to show food tastes better when you are served with love and care. I am a huge foodie, and I know good food when I see it. Unfortunately, Loloan left an awful taste...